The problem in restoration and detailing

Restoration is a project business disguised as an auto shop. A build can run for many months through teardown, media blasting, metal work, body, paint, assembly and sorting, with dozens of parts orders. Detailing is the opposite: many short appointments with packages and add-ons. Off-the-shelf software usually handles one badly and the other not at all. Here's where shops lose time and money:

  • No single view of a build. What's waiting on parts? Which decisions does the owner still need to make? The answers live on a whiteboard and in the lead tech's head.
  • Owner updates eat hours. Restoration clients are deeply invested and want photos and progress. Answering one-off texts across a dozen active builds becomes a part-time job.
  • Scope creep without paper. The owner says "while it's apart, redo the wiring" on a phone call. Months later there's a dispute about whether it was approved.
  • Hours and parts drift. Without stage-by-stage tracking, a project can run far past its quote before anyone notices.
  • Coating and film quotes are slow. Pricing coating or PPF by vehicle size, paint condition and coverage often means a callback instead of a quote.

What we build for restoration and detailing shops

  1. A restoration build tracker. Every active car on one board with its stage, assigned tech, parts on order, blockers and next decision. Built around your stages, not generic repair order statuses.
  2. A client progress portal. A private page per build where the owner sees the current stage, dated photo updates, approved work and invoices. You upload photos from your phone in the bay; the owner gets a notification.
  3. Change approval workflow. Extra work is written up, priced and sent to the owner to approve in the portal, with a timestamped record attached to the build.
  4. Hours and parts against estimate. Labor and parts logged per stage, compared to the quote, with a simple flag when a stage passes its budget.
  5. Staged billing and payments. Invoices tied to milestones, connected to your payment processor and CRM, so billing follows the work.
  6. A coating and PPF quote calculator. Pick vehicle size, paint condition and coverage package to produce a quote your front desk or website can send right away, using your pricing rules.

How it works

  1. Scope the gap. We look at what your current software and spreadsheets already do and pin down exactly what's missing.
  2. Design the workflow. We map the tool around your real stages and how your techs and front desk work day to day.
  3. Build and deploy. We build it, test it against real builds and jobs from your shop, and put it live. Most focused tools take 2 to 6 weeks, depending on scope.
  4. Support and iterate. We host and maintain it, or hand the code to your team, and add features as the shop changes.

What to look for (even if you don't hire us)

If you're evaluating any custom build or shop platform:

  • Does it model a long project, not just a repair order? Ask to see a build with ten stages and months of history.
  • Can a tech add photos from the bay in a minute? If not, nobody will.
  • Is there a record of approvals? Change approvals should be dated and tied to the specific build.
  • Who owns the code and the data? Get that answer in writing before you start.
  • What does support cost after launch? Ask up front.
  • Does it connect to what you already use? Your CRM, payments and calendar shouldn't become separate islands.
  • Can it start small? A good first version solves the one problem that costs you the most, then grows.

Software that fits the shop

RGS scopes and builds tools like these through our Custom Tool Building service. See how it fits with our other work for auto restoration and detailing shops, and read what is a custom business tool if you're weighing build versus buy.